Rental costs are expensive in Guelph and for one local woman whose living situation is financially unmanageable, she’s decided to move away from the city.
AnnMarie Krouskie has lived at 63 Paisley St. for five years. She lived with her mom, RuthAnn, until she passed away on Mother’s Day last year.
They split the $1,500 rent for the two bedroom home. Krouskie pays the full amount of rent which is all of the money she gets from the Ontario Disability Support Program (ODSP). She receives a couple hundred dollars from the Canadian Pension Plan disability benefit.
She used to work part-time at the store On The Verge but it closed in February.
Krouskie lives with multiple sclerosis (MS) which makes it difficult to work for long hours.
When she paid $750 for rent it was manageable, she said. She had money for food and clothes. Now, that's no more.
When she used the food bank for the first time, recently, she couldn't carry all of the food home and it most of it was expired.
Krouskie decided to put her name on a list for subsidized housing. She said it could take eight years until she's off the wait list. In April she was suppose to receive information about subsidized housing in the mail but when she opened the envelope there weren't any papers.
To get to the point of going to the food bank and also seek out information about housing "then to have the results of that be an empty envelope and expired food was just like, why fucking bother?" she said.
A representative of Guelph Food Bank insists it does not give out expired food, though items may be past their best-before date, which is not the same thing. "We inspect everything that goes out."
Krouskie has been grieving in the home where she shared memories with her mom. Her mom was her best friend and her dying has taken a huge toll on her. “I don’t want to be in Guelph anymore,” said Krouskie.
Her utilities aren’t included in her rent. With rent and bills she often pays $1,900 a month. The home is gas heated. Her gas bills got so expensive in the winter she would turn the heat so low she wore mittens to bed. “I was crying, I was so cold,” said Krouskie.
She kept the heat between 14 to 16 degrees Celsius. Sometimes she would use a space heater but felt guilty and was scared how much it would increase her electricity bill.
“That's the driving force with me leaving. I can't spend another winter here,” she said.
She was depressed. She thought about the people living in the encampment downtown and how cold they must have been. It felt as though she was one more bad decision away from living in the encampment.
Krouskie didn’t want to live on the brink of homelessness so she cast a wide net to find a new place to live since she found Guelph was too expensive. In her online searches she didn’t look in a specific city but all of Ontario so she could find an affordable rental.
“It used to be that random cities like Timmins would be dirt cheap. Nowhere is anymore, it doesn't seem. Like everywhere, the prices have skyrocketed,” said Krouskie.
In her search she saw some places in Toronto were more affordable than Guelph and she thinks it’s because Guelph has less rental supply.
Being on ODSP looking for rentals has never been easy for her. “I noticed there's so much discrimination for people on ODSP to even find a place,” she said.
She found an all-inclusive apartment in Ottawa for $1,800. The landlords understood her situation since they had a brother who had MS.
The moving cost she was quoted is $3,000. Since the moving company bases part of the cost on weight she is selling some of her things. 
A rent fundraiser is what she wrote on posters advertising last weekend’s sale. She’s raising money for moving costs, rent, a rental deposit and enough money to get her on her feet while she finds a part-time job in Ottawa.
For her to stay in Guelph she said a reasonable price for rent would be $1,300.
It’s been hard to sell items from her home because many of them were her mom’s and hold sentimental value. She’s going to keep a couple of her mom’s things that mean the most to her.
“Every time somebody buys something, I feel that much lighter and that much more free. It feels good. And I realized, too, that like, it's just stuff,” said Krouskie.
The things that aren’t tangible Krouskie will take with her are; her mom’s baking, love of gardening, being a Toronto Maple Leafs fan and all of the times they laughed until they were in stitches.
Krouskie thinks her mom would be happy she’s moving.
She’s 50-years-old and the older she gets the less doors there are to open. “I find right now I'm at the end of the hallway. And this is my last door to open. It's a chance at happiness.”
She’ll be hosting her rent fundraiser for the rest of the month. If people want to buy things on days she isn’t having a sale she said they can knock on her door.
